Marcelus

Cédric Bros, a Paris native born in 1986, rose to prominence as one of European techno’s defining voices in the early 2010s. Childhood exposure to mainstream pop gave way to house once the nascent “French touch” wave reached him through the pair of local stations then airing the style. At twelve he began producing tracks on basic computer programs; only after he could support himself did he expand the setup at home. He simultaneously taught himself to DJ and started performing in clubs while continuing to refine original material. Among his touchstones were Jeff Mills, St. Germain, Laurent Garnier, and Brian Eno, yet DJ Deep exerted the strongest pull: Bros initially regarded Deep as a house producer until witnessing the latter deliver sets of techno with Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann. Persistent outreach eventually secured a meeting; Bros handed over his demos, which Deep selected for release on the Deeply Rooted imprint. The 2010 EP1 fused funky house with tough techno so convincingly that reviewers openly questioned whether it could be a first record. EP2 arrived the following year to comparable praise, and in 2012 Marcelus made his Tresor debut with the Super Strength EP. That same year he launched the Singular label, which thereafter served primarily as an outlet for his own work. Two further Tresor EPs appeared, after which he was appointed resident at the label’s Berlin club. Tresor issued his first full-length album, Vibrations, in 2016. While the record drew on mathematical procedures in the lineage of Bartók and LaMonte Young, it avoided didactic stiffness, preserving the intuitive buoyancy that had first attracted listeners.